Franklin Richard and Iceman explore the Fantastic Four's secret history in September

(Image credit: Marvel Comics)

For those old school Fantastic Four fans still getting used to little Franklin Richards rockin' black hair and a stud in his ear, now he's added a full-on X-Men uniform to his more mature look.

Marvel has given Newsarama readers a first look at a splash page from September 30's Fantastic Four #24, featuring Franklin - whose status as a mutant has been an off-and-on source of storylines for Marvel for decades - hanging with his X-friends on Krakoa.

The living mutant island can pretty much transport its residents anywhere through the gateways, however, so after a hologram call from mom by the bottom half of the page Franklin is shooting through New York's Washington Square Park on his way to the FF's unassuming 4 Yancy St. headquarters with Iceman.

Yeah, Iceman.

Turns out he and the FF got history.

"Hey, remember that time Iceman replaced the Human Torch as a member of the Fantastic Four? No?" Marvel's official solicitation copy asks. "Well, Johnny Storm sure remembers! And now it's time to let everybody else in on the secret of the Fantastic Four story we were never supposed to talk about!"

Here's that image:

Written by Dan Slott with art by Paco Medina and Jesus Aburtov, the story 'Cold Snap' may or may not be a direct prologue to October's Fantastic Four #25 by Slott and new series artist R.B. Silva which promises "New villains! New uniforms! And a new, major, permanent status quo change for Marvel's First Family," or in totality "a new era for the Fantastic Four!"

The one thing FF #25 doesn't promise is a line-up change, but they're pretty much standard issue for big status quo-altering stories these days, so we'll see if Bobby Drake's secret FF history has a longer tail than just September's issue and Franklin's association with the X-Men dives deeper than it has in the past.

The FF will be getting new villains in October but read about the best villains in their history right here.

I'm not just the Newsarama founder and editor-in-chief, I'm also a reader. And that reference is just a little bit older than the beginning of my Newsarama journey. I founded what would become the comic book news site in 1996, and except for a brief sojourn at Marvel Comics as its marketing and communications manager in 2003, I've been writing about new comic book titles, creative changes, and occasionally offering my perspective on important industry events and developments for the 25 years since. Despite many changes to Newsarama, my passion for the medium of comic books and the characters makes the last quarter-century (it's crazy to see that in writing) time spent doing what I love most.